Nostalgia = Nostalghia

This is Tarkovsky’s haunting first film made outside of Russia. The story explores the melancholy of the expatriate through the eyes of the film’s protagonist, Gorchakov, a Russian poet researching in Italy. Arriving at a Tuscan village spa with Eugenia, his beautiful Italian interpreter, Gorchakov is visited by memories of Russia and of his wife and children, and encounters the local mystic, who sets him a challenging task. The film is filled with mysterious and extraordinary images, culminating in the final scene where all the film’s images coalesce into a miraculous whole. As in all Tarkovsky films, nature and the elements of fire and water, music, painting and poetry, and the contrast of black and white and colour photography, all play a major role. In Italian with English subtitles.